Targets
by Maria86
Summary: When New York's policemen become the victims of complex traps set up by a madman, it is SVU's duty to solve the case... before one of them gets hurt. Angsty with hints of EO
1. Chapter 1

_A more angsty story than my last one.... I hope you enjoy. Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to SVU._

_*****_

**When New York's police force becomes the target of the complex traps set up by a madman, it is the duty of the special victims unit to solve the case… Before one of them gets hurt.**

Ramona Valdez stretched, suppressing a yawn. A glance at her watch told her that it was merely 7.30 in the morning. A long day was beginning, and she hadn't even had the time to go home and take a shower since the afternoon before. Just as she was about to grab her mug to go fill it in, her desk phone rang.

"Valdez" she answered with a cold voice.

"Hey Ramona, I thought you might be at work so early…"

"You lucky one, I was not off duty last night and I got called by Cragen before I could even think of going home!" She teased her partner of three years, Dick Richardson.

"So you stayed all night? Is something up?"

Ramona closed her eyes a moment, to gather her thoughts and make her report.

"Um… No, nothing that I couldn't solve. A girl called 911, saying her mom left her alone at home and did not come back for two days. I went to check but it was only a sick joke. It turned out the little girl was in fact 13 and a little rebellious…" Ramona smiled when she heard laughing at the other end of the line.

"You really are lucky…" Dick managed to utter between two laughters.

"As you say."

"And what did come out of it?"

"I'll tell about it later. You're coming today, right?"

Ramona put the receiver to her other ear, moving her neck which was going stiff from the night at work. However, she did not hear what her partner answered, as Don Cragen stuck his head out of his office at the same time, calling in her direction.

"Valdez, is your partner somewhere to be found?"

The brunette whispered to her caller to hold on, and she covered the phone with her hand.

"I'm on the phone with him, actually, Captain."

"Tell him to get moving and make his way down here, you've caught a case."

After having decided Dick would come with the work car and wait for her across the street, the detective gathered her things and went for Cragen's office to take the appropriate file. Jogging towards the elevator, she met John Munch on the way, who was looking as friendly and easy going as ever…

When the elevator doors opened, Ramona greeted the detectives waiting on the other side and made her way to the street.

"Morning, Ramona." She smiled towards Olivia Benson, who was walking up the stairs towards the precinct with two coffees in her hand and the morning paper.

"Night shift?"

"Night _and _day shift!" Ramona exclaimed, raising her eyes to exaggerate her comment. "Say hello to your partner."

"I will, and you, get some sleep!" Olivia teased, turning around and taking out her cell to call Elliot and check where he was.

Ramona looked on both sides, trying to guess where her partner could have stopped the car. He was probably not there yet. She was interrupted in her reflection by her phone ringing.

"Yes, Dick?"

"I did not find a parking lot and stopped across the street, near the coffee shop at the corner."

Olivia was still on the phone with her partner when she heard tyres screeching just behind her. The noise was so unexpected that she almost let her phone fall down. The brunette turned around just in time to witness her colleague Valdez colliding with a white car. The body flew and fell back like a doll, staying limp and still on the ground.

"Call a bus!" Olivia was the first to react, jumping down the flight of stairs towards the streetand rambling two bystanders on her way. She could hear Elliot shouting on the other end of the line but her mind was only thinking of going to Ramona's bloody form. A crowd was slowly forming around the body and Olivia had to push two or three people to get through to her colleague.

"Ramona, do you hear me?" she called out loud, tapping the woman's cheek to make her wake up. Ignoring Elliot's voice, she ended the call and handed her cell to an officer who was leaning over both women.

"Call a bus now!"

Without moving the detective lying on the ground, Olivia talked to her and slapped her a little stronger to get a reaction. When the brunette's eyes fluttered open, Olivia kept talking to her until she felt a hand on her shoulder and saw Fin standing over her.

"Did you see what happened?"

"She was hit by a car. A white Ford. I did not see the license plate, it drove away too quickly."

Fin nodded, taking out his cell.

"I am going to start a search on the car. The bus is coming…" Fin's voice trailed away as he heard the sirens approach. Taking out his badge, he began dispersing the crowd so that the medical staff could get through.

"Ramona, hold on. The doctors are almost here."

Dick Richardson was pacing back and forth in the corridor. He had arrived at the precinct just as the ambulance was driving off with his partner, although he didn't know yet that Ramona was the reason for this gathering. He was now waiting for the surgeon to come and announce his verdict to him, along with six other colleagues from the 1-6. Among them was Olivia Benson, standing at the far end of the waiting room, from where she could have a general view of the situation. The policemen were mostly silent or whispering to one another, no one daring to bother Dick. Most of the policemen Olivia Benson knew were single or divorced. The unit had grown to become their family, and the partner their best friend and soul mate. Merely looking at the way Dick walked circles, rubbed his face and checked the time every two minutes made Olivia feel sick. She could remember doing that too many times in the past.

"Hey…" She had not even seen Elliot arrive from the other door and almost run towards her.

"Are you alright?"

Seeing that Elliot was staring with a blank expression on the blood that had come onto her blouse from Ramona, Olivia shook her head.

"It's not mine. Did someone explain to you what happened?"

"Yes, Fin did. He's still going through the security tapes of the coffee shop across the street and a few other places, and Munch is taking a million statements from all the officers and pedestrians who witnessed the incident."

"The car did not even try to stop, El. I heard the tyres… He was accelerating!"

Elliot looked compassionately towards his partner, his hand still resting on her arm as though he wanted to keep her from falling. He generally became overprotective when it came to Olivia, and had to restrain himself from taking her in his embrace. When she had begun shouting over the phone, ignoring his questions, Elliot had truly thought that she was involved in some shooting or other, and had driven as quickly as possible through the city.

"People sometimes press the accelerator instead of the break by mistake. But he or she will at least be charged with hit-and-run. Do you have any news from the doctor yet?"

"No… She is in surgery and no one's come out yet. Dick is going to turn crazy in a minute."

Elliot cleared his throat, turning around to look at their colleagues, greeting some of them on the way.

"You and I could go back to the precinct and see if Fin or Munch found anything, what do you say? Cragen wants us back on the Evans case anyway."

Olivia nodded, letting Elliot gently pull her away from the wall against which she was leaning.

"How is she?" Fin called out as he spotted his two colleagues walk to their desks. Olivia's shirt was still bloody from earlier, he noticed. His comment made everyone in the room freeze, except for two suspects who were fighting in their cell. A little surprised by the general silence, Olivia glanced over to Elliot before shaking her head.

"She was still in surgery when we left." Saying that, she could read the frustration in everyone's eyes as the detectives turned back to their paperload. Don Cragen, who was talking loudly over the phone, raised his hand to signify Elliot and Olivia to join him in his office.

Once his detectives had closed the door behind them, he ended the call and turned to them.

"So, how is she?"

"Still in surgery. I'll call to see if there's been any news." Olivia began standing up to leave but was stopped by her captain's voice.

"Wait, Olivia. I'll call to get more information. You and Elliot, go back to work. Michelle Evans won't wait another day for her rapist to be found."

"You want a coffee?" Elliot offered as his partner slumped down in her chair, rubbing her forehead.

"Yes, I would love one." She turned on her computer and sorted through her files, fighting to get her mind back to Michelle Evans and her parents. As Elliot brushed past her, he leaned forward and whispered to her ear "You should go and change."

Seeing the blood stains on her white blouse, Olivia nodded and went without a word to the locker room. When she came back, Elliot was already on the phone, telling Melinda Warner that they were coming down for the Evans' case.

"Hello Melinda" called Elliot as he entered the morgue with his partner. Melinda Warner was performing an autopsy on a young man with a huge bash on the right side of his head.

"Hello you two. I heard what happened to Detective Valdez. Do you have any news?"

"Not yet. She is still in Mercy General but they will call us as soon as they know something." Repeated Olivia for what she thought was the thousandth time.

"Was it an accident?"

"Probably. But the driver ran and is being looked for as we speak."

Melinda smiled compassionately and took off her gloves, walking towards her desk.

"So… About your girl. Jennifer Dickson..."

Jennifer Dickson had been killed a week before in Central Park, by broad daylight. The case had taken an unexpected turn when Michelle Evans was assaulted three days after that and survived. Both had been cut on the right palm in the same manner : the perp had engraved a cross, which had brought the detective on the tracks of a serial killer.

"As you already know, the poor girl died from multiple wounds on her chest and in the stomach area, from a sharp blade."

"Any chance of a more precise identification of the weapon?" Elliot asked while Olivia was scribbling the info the legist was delivering at an impressive rate.

"From the different mouldings I made, I would say a thin kitchen knife with notches on one side."

"… Like the one that was used on Michelle Evans." Finished Olivia, looking at her partner and back at Melinda.

"Did you do a toxic exam? Michelle Evans had traces of sedatives in her blood, but she does not remember when she could have been drugged."

Melinda flipped through her file to look at the multiple results' pages.

"Yes, she had indeed been drugged. The strange thing is that it must have happened at least two hours before the murder. The particular sedatives only kick in 60 to 80 minutes after contact."

"Was it ingested or injected?" Elliot asked. He could not keep his eyes off the young man lying on the autopsy table. He looked peaceful, that is except for the bloodstains on the head.

"Probably ingested. You are looking for someone she drank or ate with just before being murdered."

"Olivia, Elliot!" Cragen from his office door when they came back to the bull-pen. Intrigued, the detectives looked at each other and made their way towards their superior.

"Ramona Valdez is out of surgery. She had two broken ribs and a bad fracture on her right arm. The surgery took longer because they wanted to be sure to save her arm, but apart from that, she is okay… She will stay at the hospital for a couple of days."

Olivia needed two minutes to digest what she had just heard. Ramona was okay. How miraculous, after having seen her fly through the air and fall like a lifeless doll onto the concrete. The detective exhaled, feeling the knot in her throat diminish. She felt her partner's hand on her lower back. He was always there to support, as though he had a sixth sense when it came to Olivia and her well-being.

"What about the driver?" He asked mechanically, not even looking at his superior.

"Listen… I transferred the case to the relevant authority in Manhattan. We have a huge workload, and hit-and-runs are not under our jurisdiction. So go back to your case, and I will keep everyone informed if the driver is found."

When both detectives marched out of the office, Olivia was shaking her head in denial. Swearing between her teeth, she did not make eye contact with her partner until he interrupted her in her thoughts.

"What's wrong?"

Olivia smiled sarcastically, stopping in her tracks to look at her partner.

"I can't believe he's letting another squad solve this case. She is one of us." She said, almost whispering so that their colleagues would not notice her anger.

"Liv, let the traffic unit deal with that… I know you feel implicated because you witnessed the accident, but…"

"It's not that. I just feel there is something wrong."

Elliot looked at his partner and friend in silence, finally giving up in convincing her. When Olivia Benson had made up her mind, no one could make her change it.


	2. Chapter 2

Dick Richardson stopped the car in front of his partner's building and opened his door to help Ramona outside.

"Take my hand… There you are. Shall I walk you up?"

Ramona smiled and squeezed her partner's hand in hers before releasing it. He had been so cute and protective since she had awoken in her hospital bed, that she dreaded coming back to work and find him back in the old relationship.

"No, I'm okay. Just give me my things, and I'll call you tomorrow." The male detective opened the trunk to get out her bag and looked at his friend, taking in her dishevelled appearance. She still had a bandaged arm and was slightly limping.

After waiting a couple of minutes to check that Ramona had reached her building's entrance safely, Dick drove away into the night, not noticing the man following the brunette inside. While Ramona was searching through her things to find her house keys, the man ran up the stairs twice at a time. When he almost reached her floor, he slowed down his pace so as not to startle her. The woman turned around, thinking that it was one of her upstairs neighbour, and whimpered when she felt head collide with the wooden door of her flat.

Olivia and Elliot were gathered around the screen, looking at the six different pictures displaying on it.

"All these men work at the coffee shop Michelle and Jennifer went to before being raped. I only kept the employers who were working on the two days when the girls were assaulted. Two of them already have a file. Gary Stratford, for driving without license – Dean Carter, for drug traffic."

"Nothing to do with assault or rape." Elliot interrupted, looking with great concentration at the faces on the screen.

"But perps can escalate…"

"If the drugs kick only in 1 to 2 hours after ingestion, we are looking for someone who finished his shift just after serving our victims."

"I already checked with the employer." Olivia walked to the screen and pointed to four pictures.

"Rick Delgado, Anthony Morton, Alistair Moore and… Gary Stratford all were on morning shift on both days. Morning shift runs from 8 AM to 3 PM and our victims were assaulted at around 4 PM. It fits perfectly."

"Okay, so out of these four, we only have one who was already arrested. But driving with no license is quite far from rape and murder."

Don Cragen had joined his detectives very discreetly, listening carefully to Olivia's theory on their perp.

"Get all four in an interrogation room and see what you get out of them. If they work together, maybe one of them will have noticed who had an interest in our victims." He interrupted them, making both Olivia and Elliot turn around in agreement.

"And I think I saw a security camera in the coffee shop. Maybe we'll even have the interaction on tape." Added Elliot, grasping the file lying on his partner's desk, to check the phone number of the shop.

Don Cragen stayed still for a moment, then took two steps towards Olivia. Noticing the blank expression on his face as he looked towards Olivia, Elliot laid the file back down and came to join them.

"Is something wrong?" The brunette asked, now a little worried by her captain's silence and awkward attitude.

"I had a phone call from Mercy General… from detective Richardson. Detective Valdez was assaulted last night. Apparently, she was raped." Olivia looked at her partner, trying to keep her emotions inside. Only a few days before, she had witnessed her colleague, a woman with whom she had worked a couple of cases and had had a drink now and then, be almost killed by a car. And now… raped?

"Are you sure it's her?" Elliot noticed how his partner's face had become white.

"Positive. I'm on my way to the hospital right now. I just wanted to inform you of the situation, but keep on working your case."

Searching both detectives' face for a sign of agreement, Don turned around to return to his office. He had not made two steps that he felt he was being followed by Olivia.

"Captain, do you have any details? Where, when it happened?"

"If you don't mind, I want to keep it discreet. I wouldn't want the sharks from the press writing on a sex crimes' officer being raped…"

"Then who is going to work the case?"

"I haven't decided yet. I need to speak to Ramona and Dick first. Now get concentrated on Michelle Evans and her rapist."

Olivia stayed still in the middle of the bull-pen, watching her captain grab his things and leave. Until Elliot came, touching her lower back and convincing her to wait for more information before trying to interfere. However, Olivia could not get out of her mind that this was no coincidence, the same detective being assaulted twice in a week.

"Ramona, can you open your eyes for me?" The nurse was gently trying to wake up the dozing woman. In response, Ramona frowned and put mechanically a hand to her swollen forehead.

"I am awake, alright."

"You've slept a few hours and I just need to check that you have no concussion. Can you tell me what day it is?"

"Friday. I am in hospital… again… after being assaulted in my apartment."

The nurse smiled compassionately at the energy this woman was showing.

"Very good. Any dizziness or nausea?"

"No, but a huge headache…" Ramona answered, grimacing. She tried to sit down in her hospital bed, helped by the nurse and Dick, who had waited all this time beside her bed.

"Did you call the precinct?" she asked her partner after finding a more comfortable position.

"The captain will be here any minute. CSU is already searching your apartment to collect all possible clues. Can you tell me what happened?"

Ramona waited for the nurse to finish drawing her blood. This let her time to gather her thoughts and remember exactly the way it happened.

"You dropped me at home, I went up the stairs. I heard footsteps but I didn't pay attention, thinking that it was one of my neighbours. Then I turned around and someone banged my head against my entrance door. When I regained consciousness, I was lying naked in my living room. I saw blood…" Suppressing her tears, Ramona tried to remember in which order she had proceeded when she woke up.

"… I saw blood, and I understood I had been attacked. I couldn't move, so I just called until a neighbour heard me."

Dick was rubbing his chin, fighting the urge to punch in a wall. Why the hell hadn't he walked her upstairs, until she was safe and locked inside her apartment? As though she sensed what was going through her partner's head, Ramona looked up and added:

"Don't beat yourself. I should be able to defend myself, and your job is _not_ to watch me 24/7, okay?"

When a very worried Don Cragen knocked at the door and came to check on Ramona's state, she had to repeat her story and answer a million questions. The man was wearing a black mask so as not to be recognised. Ramona had been unconscious most of the time so she couldn't remember any particular physical detail about him nor what he said. She felt so useless as a cop and a person, even though Dick was putting all his energy in telling her the contrary.

When both men took their leave, the nurse who had cared of Ramona earlier came to see them in the corridor.

"There is something we didn't tell her." She announced, holding a file in her hand.

"When she came in, she was cut at various places, including on her chest and back. We had to clean her in order to care for the wounds. But I took some pictures for your services…" she said, getting out a couple of Polaroid shots from her file.

"Pictures of what?" Dick was asking as she handed him the incriminated items. Dick gasped when he saw the content, and reached one of the pictures to his superior, unable to take his eyes from his own.

"Second round." Don Cragen read out loud, looking distrustfully at his detective and the nurse.


	3. Chapter 3

"_What_ was written?" Fin asked in complete incredulity. All the available detectives were gathered around Don Cragen, in the bull-pen, as the captain was informing them of their colleague's rape.

"Second round. To preserve your colleague's intimacy, I won't display the picture, I think you understand." The captain added, ashamed at the idea of showing Ramona's breasts and the inscription to the whole unit, even though they constituted the biggest clue so far.

"I want all of you on this case. Except - of course - if you feel too emotionally involved to work this case properly." Saying this, Cragen looked with insistence towards Dick, who did not make a move. Of course, the detective would not let anyone take him out of such an important case.

"Okay, so… Elliot, Olivia, you go and talk to Ramona. Try to find if someone in her personal life could want to take revenge on her. Talk to family and friends as well. Gary, you help Dick go through all the cases Ramona worked on. There are obviously perps out there who have a grudge against her, as for everyone in this room. Nelson, I want you to check if we already had cases with the same message written. Work with the other precincts if necessary. Claire and John, get in touch with CSU. Fin, any lead on the car?" Cragen said in one breath before turning to his detective.

"We got a part of the license plate, thanks to the statements Munch got. I have run the numbers through the system and isolated all the white Fords. There are over thirty matches. I am still going through it."

Cragen, hands in his pockets, reflected for a few moments.

"Okay, you will need help with that. Claire, you take CSU and report to me as soon as you have something. John, give your partner a hand on the car. It is our only concrete clue for now, if we suppose that the accident and the rape are linked."

When he had finished, the captain waved his hand to motion to his squad to get started with the work.

When Olivia and Elliot knocked on the door of her hospital room, Ramona was packing her things.

"Hey… Going already?" Olivia asked with a soft voice, the voice she automatically took when talking to a victim. A little startled by their presence, Ramona stopped and raised swollen eyes towards her colleagues. The visits had not stopped since she had been admitted in Mercy General last night. Visits to check on her, to offer a help or to assure her the 1-6 would do anything to catch her rapist. But Ramona could predict that these visitors were there on a special duty.

"Yes… My mother is picking me up in half an hour. She lives out of town, and as I have some vacation time spared, I think I'll stay with her some time."

Olivia nodded silently, understanding that her friend and colleague wanted to get away from all this mess and needed to recharge her batteries.

"Do you mind if we ask you some questions about what happened?" she continued.

Ramona sighed, but sat down on the side of the bed, as a silent agreement for the interrogatory to begin.

"We already have the details of your statement. Maybe you can tell us a bit more on the man who attacked you? Did you see him? Do you remember any weird detail?"

"Like I said to the captain, I didn't have any time to see the man. When I felt him approach behind me, I tried to turn around but he threw my head against the door so that I lost consciousness. The only thing I saw from the corner of my eye was that he was wearing a mask. When I woke up, he was gone."

"Did someone tell you about the inscription?" Elliot continued cautiously, not wanting to throw the information to her too abruptly.

"Yes…"

"Does that remind you of something? Has someone already told you that before?"

Ramona shook her head, trying to remember all the perps she had fought with, all the criminals she had been confronted to.

"Not that I remember."

"Your partner is going through all the files you worked on. Someone in your personal life maybe? An ex boyfriend?" Olivia intervened.

"Do you think it's the same person who hit me with his car?" Ramona asked instead of answering. The first thing that had come to her mind was, of course, that the hit-and-run was the "first" round…

"That's what we think for the moment. We have a couple of men trying to find the car. We can send you a list of persons whose car could match with the one that hit you? Maybe you'll be able to recognise someone from your acquaintances?"

Odafin Tutuola was slightly going blind from sorting out the files of the traffic unit. After sending his partner John Munch to the district attorneys' office, he had begun checking the list of cars declared as stolen in the last two weeks. When he found the information he was looking for, he marched decisively towards his captain's office. Don Cragen was shouting over the phone, negotiating with the officer in charge of public relations on what she could disclose or not to the press. When he spotted Fin waiting outside his door, he instinctively knew that the detective had come with new information. And the case itself had, of course, all priorities over PR matters.

"Come in." he casually ordered when he had hung up the phone.

"I checked the cars stolen in the last two weeks and compared to our list of suspects. The white Ford of Brian Deesdale was stolen three days ago. The man was stopped at a red light, dragged out of his car and knocked unconscious. The MO is violent enough for our man."

"Good. Where is your partner?"

"With Casey, trying to convince a judge… We need a warrant to get access to the 30 cars matching the description."

"Call Casey and tell her that we need most urgently a warrant for M. Deesdale's car. The others can wait awhile."

Just as Fin was about to go out and call the District Attorney's office, he almost collided into his colleague Nelson, who had come with some news on his own. Cragen sighed, putting back the phone onto its receiver. The call to the PR officer would obviously have to wait.

"Yes, Nelson?"

The officer was nervously playing with the paper he had in his hands, unable to stop his hands from turning the paper in all directions.

"I think we might have a problem, Captain…"


End file.
